Elite: Dangerous may make its way to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 after its initial PC launch.

That, at least, was something hinted at by David Braben, the head of Frontier Developments. Speaking in a recent interview, Braben said that while the company has no official plans for a console port of its in-the-works space flight sim, the possibility is far from out of the question.

“I don’t want to do something that constitutes an announcement, but we would be stupid not to support other platforms, including console,” stated Braben. That being the case, he affirmed that Frontier’s first priority is making the game excellent on PC. “We’re very focused on delivering a great PC game,” he said. “We will then do the game on Mac and during that time we will be looking at other platforms as well.”

The PC version of Elite: Dangerous is currently pegged to release sometime this year. The mentioned Mac edition is, in turn, schedule to come out three months after the PC game. Any console edition, in turn, would likely come in 2015.

At $41 million and counting, Star Citizen’s unprecedented crowdfunding campaign has made it easy to lose track of that other major space sim in development. It’s Elite: Dangerous, and it’s a good time to check in on its progress because today it moves into premium beta.

Creator David Braben and his team at Frontier Developments announced this morning that the Elite: Dangerous premium beta — featuring a single-player combat build of the space sim — will open to backers today. It’s a small slice of what’s to come and Braben announced that a much bigger chunk, the “full premium beta” will be ready for backers on May 30.

“The Alpha process has worked well for us,” Braben said in a statement. “We have gradually built out the key elements of the game, first locally, with single player combat, then with a few thousand players across the internet. On 30th May the Premium Beta extends this to many thousands of players worldwide, with an increasingly rich game.”

The move to the premium beta also means interested gamers who missed out on the Kickstarter campaign can get in early at a much cheaper price. Access to the alpha is $295. Premium beta access, which is on sale at the official Elite: Dangerous store, can be purchased for $150.

With Star Citizen’s unprecedented crowdfunding campaign (now over $38 million) stealing all the headlines, it’s easy to lose track of that other major space sim in development. It’s Elite: Dangerous, and it’s a good time to check in on its progress because the ongoing alpha now features multiplayer.

Creator David Braben and his team at Frontier Developments have launched Elite: Dangerous Alpha Phase 2.0, and they’re sharing the multiplayer results backers are now enjoying. In the video below, Braben and Executive Producer Michael Brookes climb into the cockpit for some multiplayer action while detailing the features that are now available. See for yourself:

This is the second of four planned alpha phases for Elite: Dangerous and it officially features:

• Free-for-all melee
• Pick your side in a two-team melee
• Co-operative defense of a crippled Federal battlecruiser
• A more sophisticated ‘Pirates and Bounty Hunters’ mode which hints at the fluid choices and roles players will experience on a much greater scale in the final game

Elite: Dangerous (you know, that other massive, gorgeous-looking space sim by an industry icon that was Kickstarted early this year) just got even more intriguing. Developer Frontier announced this morning Elite: Dangerous will feature Oculus Rift virtual reality support.

The space sim is coming back in a big way in 2014. While Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen has captured the majority of the press thanks to its record $21 million in crowdfunding (and counting), don’t sleep on David Braben’s Elite: Dangerous. The two games already had a great deal in common, with their huge sandbox universes and open gameplay, and now you can add Oculus Rift to the mutual feature list. In a post on the official Frontier forums, Exec Producer Michael Brookes made the virtual reality announcement, which included a quick quote from Braben:

“We’ve been playing with the Oculus Rift dev kits and are excited about the potential – just glancing around your cockpit or being totally immersed in a space battle. Many of our backers have made it clear that they would like Oculus Rift support – and so do we! We’re very pleased with the results so far.”

Given that EVE Online’s virtual reality spaceship dogfighter, EVE: Valkyrie, is also coming in 2014, it looks like I’ll be spending countless hours navigating virtual space next year. Can’t wait. For anyone who hasn’t had the opportunity to try the Oculus Rift yet, it is mind blowing. Now Disney just needs to greenlight a new VR-enabled Star Wars: X-Wing so I can die a happy, virtual space-faring man.

Since stepping down as Minecraft’s lead developer late last year, Notch has been keeping himself busy teasing the hell out of his fans with regular hints that he’s interested in doing something that would completely blow our minds through our feet. Maybe he’ll use his magical powers to make Psychonauts 2 happen! Wait, hold on, maybe not. Ok, so what if he funds Dungeon Keeper 3? Yes, that would indeed be awesome, but unfortunately it looks like some other shiny object has caught his eye. And it’s just as likely to be both awesome and never made.

Talking to PC Gamer, Notch teased the project he’d like to make after he’s done with MiniTale; a space trading game like Elite, only “done right”. Done right how? Like a true Browncoat who’d never give in to the purple bellies, that’s how. “I want the space game that’s more like Firefly,” he said, eliciting immediate, reflexive tears of joy from people named Ross Lincoln. “I want to run around on my ship and have to put out a fire. Like, oh crap, the cooling system failed, I have to put out the fire here.”

Which is to say, not really much of a Space Trading game if you control the crew instead of the ship, though of course, this is just a general gist kind of description. For all we know you’d be controlling the minutia of the ship itself and not actually navigating the crew through the interior. And besides, this probably isn’t going to happen anyway. PC Gamer notes that Notch is just kicking ideas around about what would be cool to play. “If someone steals the idea before me, that’s totally fine. I just want to play that game.”

Let’s be honest: by this time next week, Notch will probably be talking about how we wants to get together with Michel Ancel to make Beyond Good & Evil 2 happen. Two weeks after that, it’ll be a stray comment about how awesome it would be to make Eternal Darkness 2. SIGH.